Intentional Transgressions
by the orange empire
Summary: The war is over and the machines are trying to prevent hoards of humans from defecting from the Matrix. The rebels, in a mission sanctioned by the Oracle, are smuggling them out in an unorthodox way that will affect the future of both races.
1. The Chase

Disclaimer: I do not own the Matrix, I just live here

_Disclaimer: I do not own the Matrix, I just live here. Seriously, it wouldn't be fan fiction if I owned the matrix. It would just be cannon. I'm not going to put this at the top of every chapter, so please don't forget._

_Synopsis: The war is over, but only in code. The machines are trying to prevent hoards of humans from defecting from the Matrix. In response, the rebels are smuggling them out in a slightly unorthodox way. Our narrator is caught in the middle of what is right, what is comfortable, and what his actions mean for the future of both races._

_Author's note: I have been writing this story off and on for four years, so if the tone shifts a bit, that's probably why. Sorry. But it has to be written. It won't go away. So somebody, please review because I won't go through the trouble of finishing it unless someone is actually reading it. I was going to give up on this story, but I enjoyed it so much, it needed an audience. Hope you enjoy it too. There will be some profanity. Come on, the movies were full of it. Also, I have borrowed some ideas from other works and took them in different directions. If you think you see something that might have arisen from your work, remember I have been working on this for four years so I might have actually come up with it first, and that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery._

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Ch. 1 The Chase

I had decided three nights before that I simply was not going to get up in the morning or the one after that or the one after and so forth in that fashion indefinitely. It had seemed like an easy enough conclusion at the time, wound up in my own misery and quite oblivious to my surroundings. I was stuck at a point and the best I could tell, that point was where the equation ended. I had nothing, simple as that, and was so absorbed in that notion that I could not find anything to want that would ever be afforded me. So lying there until I met a million very similar ends seemed the optimal solution. And it had gone precisely as planned for the first three days, staring up at my cracked ceiling from the couch, ignoring the creak of the building, the sounds of motion in the apartments adjacent to and above mine, the shaking of the floor whenever a door was slammed or someone clamored up the stairs. But the morning on the forth day tested my resolve and it, like so many other things in my life, failed. When I heard footsteps stop at my door early that morning, I was jarred from my self-pity.

I do not remember making a choice to do as I did. Whether it be by instinct or force of habit, I launched myself to my feet, in the process grabbing the loaded gun on the coffee table. More footsteps were following in the soft purposeful way commonly utilized to surround an unsuspecting victim. In my mind, the small mob outside my door was forming a number of visitor combinations, all quite likely and with the same intention. I edged my way silently from the living room to the balcony in the back, but knowing very good and well that they would have to be quite stupid to leave my only other exit completely unguarded.

I heard whispers in the hallway, barely audible, but there was no mistaking the words, "are you sure this is a good idea?" At least they were indecisive. That might give me a few extra milliseconds, and I knew from experience that milliseconds were all that were required to completely change the outcome.

Judging from their shuffling, I guessed there were about eight with a standard deviation of one accounting for the possibility that one member of their team might be either exceptionally still or exceptionally antsy.

I was at the balcony now. I looked out the sliding glass door. I saw no one on the balcony and flattened myself against the wall to peer down to the bottom of the fire escape. I saw no one, but from this angle it was impossible to tell. They really couldn't be so stupid as not to guard both exits… I chose the unknown, feeling rather certain that no one would be stationed on top of the roof, so at the very least I would have options once outside. I could not stay where I was at since I would most certainly run out of ammunition before I ran out of foes.

I tried to quietly open the sliding glass door. Unfortunately, I had never gone out on the balcony of this particular apartment before and so did not think to WD-40 the hell out of it so it would not squeak and alert my gathering attackers that I was trying to make a run for it. Shit. For a microsecond I was surprised with myself that I had not yet learned to do this. Then my front door burst open, and I threw the sliding glass door open with abandon and hopped onto the balcony. I mentally kicked myself. I had chosen this particular apartment because in the floor plan I had noticed that the back door was not visible from the front door. Whole hell of a lot of good it did me now. But at least they would have to go around a couple walls before they could get at me.

I quickly glanced down the fire escape. There were three people waiting at the bottom. I was beginning to think I had it right with just lying there on the couch and letting it come. Would have been a whole hell of a lot easier.

A man dressed from head to toe in black leather called out to me. "Hold it right there!" I was tempted to yell back at him, "How goddamn stupid do you think I am?!" but decided against it.

I heard the others thundering through my apartment, heading my way. I could take aim and try to shoot the people on the ground, but that would take up precious escape seconds and I could not see them well in the early morning twilight. The chances of me hitting all three fatally in the few seconds I had were not good and I did not want to waste my ammunition. I could go down, kill those three assholes, but by the time I did, their seven friends upstairs would have made it to the balcony and begun to put a number of bullet-sized holes in me. Not exactly the look I was going for. I would take my chances against the three on the ground and pulled myself up the cold, dewy ladder of the fire escape.

Now I may not have made that decision had I known ahead of time that my annoying neighbor two stories above me, who hit on me in the Laundromat incidentally, was going to pick that morning to water her plants. Who waters their plants at six in the morning? It was barely daylight! She looked rather surprised to see me climbing up to her and I assumed she was wondering who climbs up the fire escape at six in the morning, or up the fire escape at all considering its degenerative state.

"Get inside!" I hissed.

For a second she looked as if she had taken this as a return of her advances until a shot aimed for me hit one of her potted plants. She quickly obeyed.

I continued to pull myself up the ladder, hoping that the laws of probability would not work against me any further that morning and another neighbor interrupt me in my quest to get the hell away from the crazy people with guns. A couple more shots hit the building and I heard my uninvited guests clang loudly as they crowded out onto the balcony. One more story… I heard them shouting directions to each other, but did not pay their commands much heed as I desperately clamored up the slippery ladder. There! The roof! It would be easy from here.

And then something I did not at all expect happened. As I popped my head above the brick wall along the edge of the roof I was greeted by a shovel, a rather rusty shovel I might add. I was not in exactly the most maneuverable of positions with one foot already airborne, reaching for the one above, the hand with the gun flat on top of the wall and the other hand keeping me from falling backward onto the street below. So when the shovel came swinging at the side of my head with incredible force and speed, I did what most people in such situations would do. I gawked at it. As it connected with my head, I was terribly angry with myself. Done in by a simple gardening instrument. Certainly wasn't how I had pictured my final moments. I flew through the air, nineteen stories of air to be exact, and made a quick calculation of my force of impact. No, I could not hope to break my fall at that speed and knew full well that though the fall would not kill me, I would be quite unconscious when I hit, coupled with a slug to the head that would have killed most humans. And then the leather-clad people on the ground could have their way with me, which I was pretty sure had something to do with the heavy automatic weapons they were carrying. Staying on the sofa would have been so much easier.

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_Author's Note: Hopefully that wasn't too painful for you. Chapters will average this length because that's about how long my attention span is. I will be updating a couple times a week until I get to where I have no more story…and then it will be slower. Loved it? Hated it? Please review!_


	2. The Capture

Ch

Ch. 2 The Capture

Even before I was fully conscious, I was very much aware of the intense pain all over my body. Except my hands. Somehow or other, they were fine. Then I became aware that I was aware of the pain, which jolted me, as I had not expected to be aware of anything ever again.

I heard voices around me. They were whispering to one another, just low enough so I could not make out what they were saying in my battered state.

"What have you done?! You've killed him! This can't possibly be the right guy!" a female voice said rather shrilly.

"I honestly can't say," another female voice replied. "Though I'm not feeling very good about it. We'll have to wait until Morpheus gets here to verify for us."

Oh, shit. They hadn't killed me so they must want me for something, but I couldn't think of what that something might be. Shovel to the head might have had something to do with my slow mind. They wouldn't torture me would they? A bit low for them really. Morpheus considered himself to be on a sanctified mission and revenge just did not mesh well with that image.

"Is he secure?" asked another voice, male this time.

"As secure as he's going to get," responded the second female voice, sounding rather doubtful. She must be in charge. If they were unsure of the effectiveness of my restraints, which had just registered in my mind as I was still feeling the effects of my great fall, then perhaps I could get free.

"How do you know he's not dead? That was one hell of a fall."

"He is! He is! He's not breathing! We've killed a little boy! We're murderers!"

Oh, good idea! Play dead! I hadn't made a sound or moved since I had regained consciousness, so there was no evidence that I was not in fact a corpse.

"Oh, shut up! People die all the time. Get over it. Besides, we really don't know for sure. That's why we have to wait for Morpheus to I.D. him."

So I was safe for the moment.

"You mean we really might have killed some little kid in his apartment?" This was a new male voice, who was starting to sound as worried as the hysterical female.

"He's not just any little kid. He heard us outside his apartment and we were being _quiet_. Who sneaks out onto their balcony with a gun anyway? Where were his parents? What kind of parents let their kids tote around guns? No, I don't think we made a mistake."

"This is New York we're talking about. He probably lived with his mom who worked the night shift and she left him a gun to protect himself from the local riffraff. I wouldn't' leave my kids home alone there without some way to protect themselves."

One of the male voices scoffed at this idea.

Okay, maybe I wasn't so safe. I still wasn't going to give them a sign one way or the other.

I listened for cues about my environment. Judging from the number of different voices and footfalls, there were at least five people in the room with me. From the way their voices carried, it must have been a fairly small room with few furnishings. Everyone sounded above me and the surface I was on was colder than the air and quite hard, so I assumed I was on a tile floor. I was laying on my right side with my hands cuffed tightly behind my back. They were not standard issue, but a specially designed program that not only kept my hands immobilized, but made them feel rather numb. So that was why they had not hurt when I initially awoke. I could only guess that the substance holding my arms against my body was duct tape and was used to tie my legs together. The duct tape must have also been wrapped in a heavy metal chain because I could feel the links digging into my skin. The escape theory was dying in my mind.

"Even if this is the right guy, how do we know if he's awake? He might be listening to us right now trying to figure out how to get loose."

I was really beginning to wish that this particular group were a little less bright.

"Well, try kicking him a few times, see if he reacts."

That had to be the least scientific means possible. But there were worse stimuli than a human foot.

"Sure, let's bruise up the dead kid some more."

"Stop! Don't hurt him anymore!"

There came a hard kick in the small of my back, then one in my left shoulder and finally one in the back of my head. I willed myself not to react despite the refreshed pain. Oh, that little shit was going to pay…him and that shovel. Before my attacker could make another blow, the door opened.

"Morpheus! About time you got here!"

There was a short pause and the man replied, "I was gathering a few…supplies. I see you have found our contact."

Contact? That must mean they want information. About what? I certainly knew plenty, but not things of the sort they would find interesting. At least not now. Whatever they wanted to know, I would not tell them. But the way Morpheus had said the word "supplies," I became worried that I might have limited choice in the matter. How had they found me to begin with? I didn't advertise in the personals. If any rebel ship could find me, I must be embarrassingly obvious.

"Well, we hope he's the right one. The guys were getting a little worried that we might have a dead body on our hands with no pulse or respiration."

"Programs only have a pulse and respire when operational. If you indeed knocked him unconscious, he would have stopped breathing." How did he know that? How many programs could he have incapacitated?

"How did you subdue him anyway? I did not imagine he would come willingly."

There was a pause.

"Well, it began with a shovel and ended with the pavement."

Morpheus waited a moment to process the information.

"You hit him with a shovel?"

"Uh-huh. In the head. Really hard. Surprised the piss out of him."

"That's it? If that's it, I'm afraid you might just have killed some unfortunate soul."

"Oh, no. We were on the edge of the roof. Had to have fallen two hundred feet."

"I see. Well, let's see what we have here."

I didn't think it would do him any good. Only a handful of people would recognize me, and a rebel was not among them. I knew he couldn't know me, but I knew him well and I was afraid that he would look past the shell and see me for who I was. Silly, really, but it had been a bad day and my work had not yet been tested. On top of the throbbing pain coursing through me, I felt ill, as though some virus were invading me and corrupting my programming. Fear did this to me and I did not like it. It made me feel weak. Unfortunately, I had become depressingly familiar with this emotion as of late. But who would have ever thought that I would some day come to fear this human? That I would find myself in a very similar predicament to the one he had been a short year ago?

I heard three pairs of footsteps walk from the door around to where I lay on my side on the cold, hard floor. I kept my eyes closed. I didn't want to see. There was no way he could recognize. Maybe he would be foolish enough to believe me dead. Maybe I would wake up on my couch again and realize that this was just another nightmare. But none of these ruminations were true. I heard him get down on his knees and felt him breathing on me, only a foot away.

"That's him."

The sick feeling in me got worse. Maybe he would think I was still unconscious.

"Open your eyes, Charlie."

_AN: So do you know who your protagonist is yet? Originally I introduced him here (and I guess I still technically do), and hopefully in the rewrite I took out all the obvious clues. It's more fun to let you guess. So guess away and review!_


	3. The Interrogation

Ch

Ch. 3 The "Interrogation"

My fear of this man was now matched only by my loathing of him. He was one of the most persistent of all the rebels, believing that it was his duty to find "the One" to save humanity. Which would not have been a problem if his intelligence were that of the anomaly he did eventually produce. And now he had the audacity to refer to me in the familiar, his voice calm and even. I would not stand for his impudence. Or lay helplessly on my side as was the case. How did he know my name, anyway? It's not like we had a grand round of introductions the last time we had met. I wanted to kill him so badly. I'm sure I would feel so much better if I could just kill this one man.

I did not comply, at least not at first. I did not want to admit to the reality of the situation, I did not want to obey him, but I also knew I did not know enough about my surroundings to formulate a means of defense. So I decided I would just make him wait awhile. I could handle being kicked a few more times. Besides, he did not know that I heard him.

"Charlie, stop pretending. I know you're awake. You're breathing again."

Damn it! He was right of course. My breathing was slow and shallow, but anyone watching closely enough could tell. It was an involuntary response to simulate human behavior and I could not simply turn it off. I cursed him again for his intelligence.

I could have continued the charade, make him look like a fool, but the resistance followed Morpheus as a saint and would dismiss my inaction as stubbornness, not unconsciousness. I could also tell him where to go, but it really wouldn't have accomplished anything and I really needed to know what was going on around me. I gritted my teeth and opened my eyes, making sure my face reflected the most vacant of expressions.

The room was quite dark, with only a little light coming from what I assumed was a shaded window just out of sight. Barely a foot from my face was Morpheus, crouched down to look at me, with a triumphant smile. A few feet away was a woman I recognized as the rebel Niobe. I had chased her a number of times as well, but not to the point of tedium as it had been with Morpheus. I heard shifting feet behind me, but could see no one and nothing else. The price of my compliance was higher than the yield. I still did not know how to escape, much less killing Morpheus in the process. It occurred to me that if he should get any closer to my face, I would bite him out of spite. For almost a full minute, we stayed there, no one moved and no one spoke. Finally Morpheus broke the silence.

"Welcome, Charlie. I apologize for the… inconvenience, but you were uncooperative."

I said nothing. What was I supposed to do, ask him to make up for it now by untying me? Oh, and did he have any Aspirin because I really felt like shit? So I continued to stare blankly at him. It didn't faze him in the least.

"You probably want to know why we brought you here. The truth is that I'm not entirely sure. But I do know that we can help each other out. As it turns out you are part of the great prophesy. We're still mulling over the details. The problem, Charlie, is that many things have changed over the past six months. "

Oh, great, he was going to start gloating. I still had the option of telling him where to go and where he could stick that damn shovel.

"But much remains the same," he continued.

I wasn't really certain what he meant by this. Please, don't let him go off on one of those philosophizing sprees he's famous for, I thought. I had never been subject to them, but they were rated quite poorly. Get to the point already! But apparently Morpheus and his associates enjoyed seeing me in such a vulnerable state as he remained on the meandering trail that would cross over itself several times before coming to an end.

"That is why we are here." That is not a reason! Vengeance is a reason. Curiosity is a reason. Hell, _boredom_ is a reason. But _that_ is not a reason! They could not pummel me and tie me up just to tell me that some things change and some stay the same! If this was a new revelation to him, then I had clearly misjudged him. Fortunately, although I would not know so then, that was not all.

"The world has not changed as it was intended to change, as it was agreed it would change. It would seem you are not willing to relinquish as much as you promised."

I had an idea to what he was referring since I had never promised to give the man anything, not even a quick death. What did this have to do with me? I no longer had anything to do with the Mainframe and I never had any say in its decisions. I wanted to ask, but my shrunken, deformed, practically nonexistent pride would not allow me.

"We are here because we believe you may be able to help us." Let us just step back for a moment and analyze all that is wrong with the above statement. First of all, I have no power, none at all. That was the bit I was having so much trouble coping with. Secondly, if I did have any, I would not squander it on the rebels. And I think that presumption was what hurt me the most. Finally, judging from the shuffling behind me, the "we" part was not entirely accurate.

I waited for him to continue, but he did not. He was expecting something from me, an indication that I had heard and understood him perhaps? I kept up my staring contest. After roughly half a minute, he stood and looked around as though he expected something to happen.

But nothing was happening. And I was still bound and quite uncomfortable. How long was I willing to lie there and indulge my obstinacy? It was not logical. A forward progression required a catalyst of some fashion and so I ignored the part of myself that was willing to spend eternity on that floor if it meant pissing off Morpheus. I didn't really like that part of myself anyway. Too human.

"_And what, pray tell, do you think I could or would do for you_?" My voice was smooth and even despite my malicious intent.

At this Morpheus smiled and Niobe next to him jumped as though she too had expected a prolonged dormancy. There was silence.

"I do not yet know."

For the first time since I had opened my eyes, I blinked. What?! He was just trying to screw with me! That bastard! It's low to kidnap someone, but without knowledge of how that person might be used to your advantage, that's cruel and idiotic. Oh, I was gonna kill him. I would chew through the duct tape if I had to. Might be interesting actually since I had never tasted duct tape before. Given enough time I might could even stretch my way out. That part did not matter, the corpse was the integral component. I thought I might strangle him as I thought he might find it rather amusing to die from lack of imaginary air.

With that he turned around and left with Niobe following close behind. I heard a couple more sets of feet leave with them and the three that had been moving most anxiously before were now still as the door closed with a creak.


	4. The Escape

Ch

Ch. 4 The Escape

I was, at this point, furious. Not just with Morpheus, but also with myself. I had given away yet another piece of my dwindling dignity for nothing. I had been hoping for some return, not more confusion. It was then that I decided that I did not mind being caught by the Mainframe because I'd already been captured by the rebels. At least I knew what the Mainframe was going to do to me. Maybe deletion wasn't so bad. No one could humiliate me any further if I did not exist. And so after laying there for another three hours with the rebels behind me whispering to one another (boring stuff, really), I set out to free myself. I pulled my arms away from my body as hard as I could and willed the tape and chains to stretch. It was difficult, but finally my bonds were significantly slackened. The guards behind me were not oblivious to my efforts and began shouting at me to stop it or else. But they could give me nothing worse than what I wanted for myself, so I continued my struggle. I felt the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of my head and paused.

"You! Go get one of the captains! You bastard, hold still! I would love nothing more than to kill a program, even if it is a worthless has been."

Again I was amazed at my refusal to die by their hands. Not by the likes of you! Not by some filthy rebel!

In a second, with much less effort than before, the trigger of the gun disappeared and I simultaneously rolled away so that I was facing my adversaries. To say the rebel was shocked would be an understatement as his index finger contracted onto air. His companion wasted no time, aimed, and fired. The bullet hit me in the shoulder, just south of where a collarbone would have been. It stung the way bullets always did when they made their mark and I winced slightly. Before I could decide what to do next, the second rebel had fired again. I saw it coming, but could do nothing to prevent it too from connecting. I decided to let it make its course and prepare for evasion of the third. I stretched my bonds and they gave way like taffy. At that point the second bullet hit me, about eight centimeters lower than the first. I pulled my handcuffed arms over my head as the third bullet was fired and with my greatly increased mobility was able to squirm out of the way to avoid it. Although my bindings were loose enough so I could move, they were still stuck to me and I worried that if I did get to my feet I would trip. I ripped the handcuffs apart and a fourth bullet was fired. I tried to pull off the tape, but my hands were not properly responsive from the cuffs. I managed to avoid the fourth bullet, but the first rebel had given up on his triggerless gun and threw it at my face. It struck my nose and I felt blood begin to flow down my face.

The rebels were now shouting for help to anyone who would listen. The first had backed away. I was impressed by the fear I could instill after all this time even in such a dilemma.

Apparently the second rebel had been one of the people on the ground shooting at me that morning because no more bullets protruded through his gun, only a faint clicking noise. A wave of relief washed over me. He was also too fearful of me to physically attack, only he did not even bother to throw his gun at me. They both gaped at me momentarily and then fled the room. I'm not sure what they expected of me covered in duct tape and bleeding from three places.

I felt tired, not just from my manipulations, but also from the blood my host was losing. I panicked slightly. Every time this happened, it was possible that this shell would become permanently damaged. Programs need a shell to exist in the Matrix, so without it I would die.

First things first, I had to get loose. I awkwardly attempted to push the tape off with the limited use of my hands and was partially successful with all from my arms and torso removed when someone entered the room.

I had expected more of the rebels to start a fresh attempt to subdue me. The person who entered was a young woman of average stature and long, dark hair pulled back in a bun and wearing a blue suit and three-inch white heels. I recognized her immediately and cowered just enough for her to notice and laugh.

"I had hoped it would be you," she said smiling. She closed the door behind herself.

I said nothing. I did not know what to say. I was convinced that she would soon be accompanied by the upgraded agents since she had discovered me. But there was silence and no one else came.

"I see you've gotten yourself into more trouble. But that is old shoe is it not?"

I was afraid of her. Certainly too afraid of her to correct her expression. I knew she had the power to delete me then and there without the aid of the agents. But if she had wanted to delete me, why had she not done so already? Oh, do not get me wrong, she loved to gloat, but she was also very efficient and would not have allowed her desires to deter her from her purpose. I was sitting up against the wall, bleeding quite badly and praying with her, the way I used to pray when she could actually hear me, to get it over with. But she did not delete me.

She approached me slowly, silently, and dropped down on her knees to look me in the face. She stayed there, motionless for nearly a minute, thinking I had no idea what. Then she leaned forward, reached behind me and pulled me toward her in an embrace. My wounds stung more as her shoulder bumped mine and then the pain faded. She rested her head on my good shoulder and I realized what she was doing, but was still struggling with her motivation.

I felt fine, I felt great.

I remembered how close she had once been to me and I wanted to cry, but settled for relaxing. She released me, stood up, and backed away a couple of paces.

"Why?" I whispered.

She giggled gently.

"That was always one of your favorite questions." She waited and then continued, "I am too old and set in my ways to be told by the Mainframe how I'm supposed to feel. I could not stop caring just because you had been dismissed. I am the Glitch Manager, there is nothing anywhere that says I cannot aid exiles if I see fit. I came to serve my purpose, to investigate the glitch. Now I know what caused it, I have a good idea why it happened, and the glitches have been repaired."

I looked at the gun on the floor next to me, the one that had hit me in the nose, and noticed that the trigger was back where it belonged. The stretched duct tape was gone completely, as were the debilitating handcuffs. I look at her mournfully. She knew she shouldn't have done what she had. She knew she could get in trouble for it. I did not want to be the cause of any trouble for her. But what she had done, while it could be undone, the action itself could not be erased. I wondered how many exiles, how many past associates she had aided. I knew I would have been angry with her had I known, but at that instant in time I was grateful.

"Thank you."

It was then that the rebels reentered the room, with Morpheus in the lead and Niobe taking up the rear.


	5. The Reason

Ch

Ch. 5 The Reason

The parade of seven rebels did not shock the Glitch Manager at all. She smiled lightly as they entered the room.

"I haven't noticed you in a while. Must have been more careful in the past few months," she said eyeing Morpheus.

Morpheus would have had no way of knowing who she was because she very rarely shows herself in this form and usually only when she's doing something she doesn't want the Mainframe to know about. So it surprised me that _he_ was not at all surprised to see her and did not question what should have been a curious comment.

"So you are the First Target," he responded.

Now, let me just tell you that the Glitch Manager is _really_ old. She has been around since the very first Matrix nearly a millennium ago. So she was never surprised by anything and was almost always on top of what was going on. But for the first time I had ever seen, she was totally bewildered.

"You better not start shooting at me, you wild monkey."

A couple of the rebels stifled giggles.

"Please," Morpheus began, "We have much to discuss."

What is going on here? He doesn't want to tell me jack shit, but he wants to talk to her and he doesn't even know who she is! Not that I thought he knew exactly who I was.

The Glitch Manager eyed him suspiciously. "What could _you_ want to say to _me_?"

"We want to ask you for your help."

Now this made the Glitch Manager laugh as it had made me want to laugh. "Look, rebel, I don't know who told you what, but they were lying. I do not help humans except by keeping their little habitat relatively glitch free."

"Just listen to what I have to say. If you refuse, you refuse."

The Glitch Manager smiled and produced a large, fluffy armchair out of thin air and plopped down onto it. "This might be entertaining."

I was still sitting on the floor, now quite ignored, thoughts colliding violently in my mind until I came to a simple conclusion: this had been a set-up all along. But they would not know, they did know enough…

Morpheus and Niobe were seated on the couch on the wall opposite me that I had been unable to see until I was struggling with my bonds. A clear indication of just how nervous the rebels were around me that during the three hours I was guarded, no one had been seated. The other five stood, looking back and forth between me and this new apparition. "Hey, didn't you shoot him twice? And where's the tape?" the rebel who had first attempted to shoot me whispered to his companion. The other just shrugged.

"Oh, yeah, which one of you bastards kicked me?"

I had honestly been too dumbfounded by the entire situation to think of retaliating for my treatment, but now that I had been reminded, I was not sure if I should attack, run, or sit and wait to see what would happen. They all once again fully armed, so attack would only be an option if the Glitch Manager felt like aiding me in my vendetta. Unlikely. But I did not think that she would let them harm me either after going through all the trouble to heal me. I looked at her and asked silently what she planned to do. She reacted as though she had heard me.

"Aren't you curious what they have to say?"

I nodded. "But they wouldn't tell me anything. I'm not sure if they will now."

The rebels, except Morpheus, were all quite agitated now because they seemed to think that the attack option was the one I would choose. But I had always been notoriously curious and if in fact the Glitch Manager could get them to speak, I wanted to know what was being said.

She spoke now, "Oh, he'll behave himself as long as you leave him alone…for the moment anyhow."

The rebels did not look as though they were going to accept that statement, but Morpheus was content with her assurance and they just looked at me nervously with their weapons pointed in my general direction. Foolish, really. After all, who's more dangerous, someone who can stretch duct tape or someone who can produce luxury furniture out of nothing?

"So…you were going to tell me something?"

"Over the last six months, many things have changed, but many things remain the same." Oh, no, not again! But I really could strangle him this time. Oh, he better not…

"The machines have been unwilling to release humans from the Matrix that wish to leave as they have promised-"

The Glitch Manager cut him off. "I know for a fact that that is not true. Removal of an individual from the Matrix before death alerts the Plant Operators to release them because they are defective and may damage the holding unit. There have been two times as many exits in the past months than anytime in the past." She glared at him, daring him to contradict her. I always marveled at how she was able to obtain more information irrelevant to her function than anyone else. It's probably why she liked me.

"This I will not dispute," Morpheus said. "Yet whenever we enter the Matrix, we are still chased away if we are located in time."

The Glitch Manager laughed. "Of course you are! Did you think the Mainframe would allow you to remove every human from the Matrix? It was agreed that those that wanted to leave, _those who knew about the Matrix before the agreement and had not left yet_, would be allowed to go. Certainly no one ignorant of his confinement would wish to escape it. _You are coming in to tell people the truth and that is not acceptable!_ What this has to do with me, I'm not sure I want to find out."

But I had known since he repeated the line he used on me to her what he would want from her and so did she.

"I'm not sure what you can do for me, but I do know you are one of the keys."

The Glitch Manager smirked.

"And how do you know that?"

There was a pause.

"The Oracle told me so."

His answer did not surprise me, but it did anger me. The treacherous old woman was at it again. It was not enough to arrange peace with our sworn enemy, she had to actively take humans from our power supply. What did she think she was doing? Letting more humans go would hurt everyone involved, us because we need power and them because they cannot support an expanding population. How were they going to feed all these new people? How were we going to make up for the loss? She was too much of an idealist. She did not deal with the world as it was. She was the mother of disorder and I seriously wondered if she had foreseen that she would be the end of us. This was entirely her fault, the failure of my life was her fault, and I could never forgive her for it. And to think she had told me on our first and only meeting that everything would be fine.


	6. The First Trip to the Oracle

AN: We've got our first flashback chapter here

_AN: We've got our first flashback chapter here. There will be several over the course of the fic, but not too many to begin with since I'm still not coming out and directly identifying our narrator. This chapter develops the character without naming him. But it does give what I thought were some rather large clues. Enjoy._

Ch. 6 The first trip to the Oracle

My brothers and I had been a rambunctious bunch, more rambunctious than programs aught to be even at such a young age. It was this fact that worried our mother despite our very obvious affinity for our purpose. My father's attitude toward us was largely disinterest. The older programs had a sense, a need to protect their own, but there were so many of us that it did not seem to matter to him that we were his offspring. Much of the time he wished to be rid of us entirely as we seemed more trouble than we were worth. It annoyed our father that Aiden was so dominating, that I was so inquisitive, that Brent was so needy, and that our sense of logic did not resemble his in the least.

So after another grueling day of training, grueling for our father anyway, he agreed to let our paranoid mother take us to see the Oracle, probably hoping she would say we were a lost cause and to delete us. We were preparing to get into the car when we received a call from Father saying that he had a particularly easy case that day and that one of us should come and observe. He knew better than to have all three of us come. We would have ended up in a tree four blocks from where we were supposed to be, pelting acorns at the people below us and then asking them for the time.

So Aiden, the most eager of the three, stayed at home and waited for Father to come and get him. Brent and I got into the backseat of our mother's Volvo and only put on the uncomfortable seatbelts that dug into our necks after she had nagged us.

I did not know anything about the Oracle except that she supposedly knew the future. I did not know then that she had played such a large part in our creation and what would happen as a result. So Brent and I thought we were going on a short trip, like any other, that would undoubtedly amuse us and give us opportunity to cause mischief, much to the chagrin of our mother.

We did not try to be bad; in fact we tried very hard to be good. But we had difficulty seeing things from others' perspectives and simply did not know enough about the world to properly react to it. That was normal. We just went at it with gusto.

We looked out the window trying to decide where we were in relation to everywhere else with which we were familiar. After half an hour of driving through the city, we came to a stop outside a shady-looking apartment building.

"Looks like the kind of place rebels would be," Brent whispered to me.

I nodded. I did not know then most of her visitors were rebels and that we going against the grain bringing young programs to see the Oracle. But my mother was well respected and she knew the Oracle personally as they were sister programs.

We entered the front door and my brother and I stiffened automatically. They could be lurking anywhere. Maybe we would see one! We rode in the elevator to the 13th floor and got out. Mother led us down a few hallways until we arrived at room 1342. She knocked on the door and the door immediately opened. Inside was an Asian man slightly taller than Father and wearing sunglasses.

"The Oracle has been expecting you. You may enter, one at a time, when you are ready."

I looked at Brent. He shrugged.

"You go first."

"No, you go first."

"No, you go first!"

"No, you go first!"

If Aiden had been there, he would have gone first and there would not have been an argument. But we were both more timid than he and the state of the building made us nervous and seek the protection of our mother.

"Charlie, just go in," she said waspishly.

I tried to contain my nervousness and walked through the beaded doorway to the kitchen. There, barefoot with a potholder on one hand and a cigarette in the other, was an elderly black woman. She smiled as I walked in.

"Come in, take a seat. Cookie?" She held out a plate of cookies to me.

"No, Mother says I shouldn't put things in my mouth."

She looked amused. "And why does she say that?"

I sat down at the table.

"She says it isn't becoming of a program," I told her. I paused and looked up at her. "But how am I supposed to know what things taste like if I don't put them in my mouth?"

The Oracle smiled broadly. "How, indeed?"

I shrugged and rested my head against the table, tapping my foot to some unheard rhythm.

"So why are you here today?"

I turned my head so that I was looking at her.

"You don't know? I thought she would have told you before she brought us."

"Oh, she told me, I want to know what you will say."

I gave her a quizzical look and told her anyway. "She's afraid the Mainframe is going to take one look at us and delete us. She wants you to tell her that it won't."

"What do you think?"

"What do you mean, what do I think? I'm just a kid. I don't know anything."

"I think you know more than you let on."

I thought for a few seconds. "I know that everyone thinks we're strange, but that Father thinks we are progressing faster than normal. Mother hopes we'll outgrow the strangeness."

"Do you think you're strange?"

I began to drum my fingers on the table nervously. Why was she asking me the questions? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

"I guess so. If everyone says we are, then we must be."

"How do you know everyone is right?"

I was getting flustered.

"They're my only point of reference. If I am not like them, I must be strange." I looked at the floor. "I don't want to be strange."

"Why not?"

I look up at her, angry. "Because it's dangerous! Because it's human! Because agents chases down and kills strange humans and programs! I want to be normal. I'll pretend to be normal. They won't come after me because I'm strange."

I felt a tear slide down my cheek.

"How sad it is that we must learn such discretion at such a young age."

I said nothing.

"Life will not be easy for you. It isn't for anyone," she said shaking her head sadly. "But you'll make it."

My head popped up.

"But I will have a life?"

"What do you think you're living right now?"

"A preparation for a life. If we're good enough, we'll live."

She looks sad for a moment. "Aren't you at all grateful for what has been given to you?"

"Sure I'm grateful. I'm grateful for my mom, and my siblings, and my house, and the car, and all the nifty bugs in our yard, and the big oak tree, and the stars in the sky, and sometimes even my dad."

She smiled slightly at this and then her face became serious.

"No matter what you're mother or father or brothers or anyone else tells you, you are a good boy."

I was rather surprised by her change of subject and precisely what she had said.

"How do you know? I just met you. And everyone else seems to disagree. How are you right and everyone else wrong?"

"Good and bad are more involved than doing or not doing what others tell you to do."

"Are you telling me to disobey my father? Cause I'd really like that."

She laughed. "No, I'm just telling you to consider that before you make decisions, that's all. Like eating cookies. Come on, I assure you that there is nothing inherently wicked about eating cookies. Your mother just wants what's best for you, but sometimes her notions are misguided." She offered me another cookie. I took it carefully and sniffed it suspiciously. I took a small bite and chewed it slowly, analyzing it. "Interesting."

She smiled at me.

"So I can tell my mom that they won't delete us, at least not now?"

"If you want to. You don't have to tell her anything if you don't want."

"I don't mind. I just won't tell her about the cookie." With that I shoved the rest of it into my mouth and crunched it noisily.

I got up to leave and stopped.

"So, can you tell me what will happen to us?"

She sighs. "Curiosity will be the death of you, that's for sure."

"That's what my mother says. What about my brothers? Will they be okay?"

She smiled rather wistfully. "Everything will happen as it should happen."

I took that to mean that everything would happen as I had hoped it would happen. Naïve, surely, but I wanted nothing more than to hear that we would happily fulfill our purpose for the next five centuries, as my mother had.


	7. The Oracle's Prediction

Ch. 7 The Oracle's Prediction

"And what exactly did the Oracle tell you? I have to admit you have gotten me rather curious as it is not in my nature to help humans and yet it has been foretold that I will. Unless…unless you are lying to me, in which case I will be very…displeased." The Glitch Manager gave Morpheus a ruthless look lest he doubt her seriousness.

Morpheus did not falter in the least. "I went to her to ask her what could be done about our aforementioned problem. She gave me directions for finding him…" He pointed at me. "Picture, name and such, and said that those who could help us would then find us."

The anger was rising in me again. I did not like being a pawn in a game I did not know about. I did not like being a tool to gain something better, as I had always been. So I had been brutalized to get to her. I was once again a cursory figure in the equation. I hoped that somehow the Oracle had misled him. I hoped that the Glitch Manager would kill him for his impudence.

The Glitch Manager laughed.

"Simple as that, huh? Well, I don't know what to tell you, except that you are shit out of luck. Now some other insane program may barge in and vow allegiance, but it ain't gonna be me. I do not know enough about humans to know if you are lying, but your tale seems impossible. That old woman is the one and only program who would ever consider helping you. Even exiles have enough sense to distrust humans."

The Glitch Manager stood up.

"I think this meeting is over. I am tired of listening to you and I do have other things to do. So if you'll excuse me. Oh, and Charlie, you might want to come with me. You looked rather ridiculous bound and bleeding."

"Wait." Morpheus held up his hand.

The Glitch Manager stopped, but I continued to walk toward her.

"We are prepared to make an offer to you in exchange for your cooperation."

The Glitch Manager and I were both perplexed. I could feel her growing irritation. Who did this man think he was trying to bribe her? It would have been bad to try to bribe me, an exile with nothing to loose, but she was part of the system. She had a lot to lose and nothing to gain. She could have the agents here in less than a minute to dispose of this presumptuous little human. Of course, I was there and would not have liked to be present when the agents arrived, but if she could just record it for me…

"What could you offer me? You do not even know who I am! You have no idea what I could even do for you!"

"I know you are quite powerful. You would not have come to his aid if you did not have the ability to do so without interference. You materialized a chair out of thin air. I wonder what else you could do?"

The truth of the matter was, she could do a great deal for him, but there was no reason he should know that. Somehow I doubted he would believe that she was just a representative of Ethan Allen. But she could tell him she was a loading program. They had loading programs of their own, hence the AK47's.

"That really is none of your concern. You have nothing that I want. I am a goddess here. I _have_ everything I want."

"Oh, but you don't really _have_ anything at all. You are a program living in a dream world. You have nothing. We could give you reality."

I truly did not see where Morpheus was going with this. We were programs in the Matrix. This was our world. We were not interested in the physical, it was just as alien to us as it was to those asleep. I was curious, yes, and I imagined she was too, to know how accurate our world was. But it was all an abstraction, like a dream.

"What do I care about reality? It is nothing to me."

"Oh, I'm sure it means something to you. You would care if the machines lost the war."

"What war? There is no war! You are a rebel, fighting against the very system that keeps most of your species alive! You are no threat! There are no concessions because you are an annoyance at best!"

"Then why do you care whether or not we persist?"

"Because your perseverance is unnerving. You are potentially dangerous. If your numbers grow the way you wish them to, then maybe you might become a hazard. You are destructive, you are deceitful, and now that you have finally become manageable, you will be so maintained! So if you are trying to sell me some insurance in case things do not turn out as planned, you can forget it!"

"I would not presume to be so bold. I do not offer safety, but freedom. Freedom from this artificial world."

I was feeling sick again, only this time it wasn't from fear. It was from a memory I wish I didn't have. That tactic would have worked on someone, but not the Glitch Manager, who was now quite furious.

"Look, asshole, this may be a cage for a primitive human that is never satisfied with what it has, but as far as I'm concerned, you live in your own little cage of steel and the worst part is that you put yourself there."

She was not going to stand there and be insulted any more and I wasn't going to let her leave me with them. They might have more shovels. She pushed past the rebels and out the door, vanishing the poofy chair behind her as she went. I followed her closely as the rebel weapons did me. It pained me to leave them with such a large score to settle, but I saw no alternative that did not end with bullet holes throughout my body, and as I mentioned before, such a situation was firmly tacked on the "bad things" list.

Morpheus nor any of the other rebels tried to stop us or spoke to us at all as we departed. Surely they would not give up so easily. Yet their options seemed just as limited as my own; there was no way to convince a program as powerful as the Glitch Manager of anything she did not wish to be convinced. She held the door open for me to exit and then closed it behind me with a creak, but the door did not click shut.

The hallway was nearly as dark as the room had been with only a single fluorescent overhead light in the entire stretch of hallway that produced little more incandescence than the fire exit light. The walls we lined with the sample diagonal-patterned wallpaper, but the floor was a threadbare mauve carpet. Doors lined both sides of walk, one every fifteen feet or so, with nothing more than the door number and a simple peephole.

We walked to the end of the hallway, the Glitch Manager in the lead since I did not know in exactly which of a million hotels we were located. It looked familiar, but after all this time, they all seemed familiar. She lead me to an elevator and I pushed the down arrow, once and then firmly again when the light did not immediately come on. After a couple of minutes, the elevator stopped on the number 11, apparently our floor because the doors opened with a shudder.

The general decrepit nature of the building made me nervous, not because I was afraid of what might lie behind those doors, but because I was not certain of the safety of the elevator and after that morning was not in a hurry to fall another dozen or so stories. Sensing my reservations, she pushed me gently into the elevator and came in behind me.

It was I who selected the first floor on the panel inside the elevator. When no one else came, the doors closed slowly, as if it took an enormous force to do such a simple task and we began our descent.

She said nothing to me the entire way down and I wondered what would happen when we reached the bottom. The truth was I did not want to leave her after having been so isolated for so long. I could not go back to my apartment lest the rebels try something again. I didn't imagine the owner would let me stay after that mornings shooting spree, but I at least would not ever have to see that annoying girl again. There was nothing there I wanted enough to retrieve, nothing I wanted to endure countless questions and prying looks over. I could go anywhere, do anything and yet I felt more limited than I ever had before. It would not matter where I went, they would find me and I would find nothing. Who "they" was didn't matter any more than where because the intentions were almost always the same. They were programs that managed any number of things, the weather, system maintenance, interfacing, the winning lotto numbers, that had simple existences and purposes and could not forgive me of mine. We're all here to do what we're all here to do. I seemed to remember that from somewhere and yet I could not remember those words ever having been said to me. As the rebel Chernobyl had told me less than an hour ago, most of them would like nothing better than to kill me. The rebels did not worry me as much because they were human after all and as such were much more direct in their methodology. An attack from say the Merovingian would be nowhere near as obvious or obtuse. It would be artistic and full of irony since he had been denied what he felt were his due rights with my brothers. I was stirred from my thoughts as the elevator door opened with a ding and the Glitch Manager pulled me out by the arm as though I were not capable of it on my own.

The lobby was just as bad as the rest of the building, mauve carpeting as far as the eye could see. Their interior decorator really needed to be taken out and shot.

A pair of glass double doors led to the bright, outside world and I noticed for the first time that I was missing my sunglasses. I never left them behind. Never. And yet that morning I had grabbed my gun and not my glasses sitting right next to it. It was uncharacteristic behavior on my part and unsettled the calm that had overcome me once I had realized we were back on the ground floor. I need my glasses, the light will surely blind me, I thought.

The Glitch Manager pushed open the door on the right and held it open, all the while keeping her grip on my shoulder, not the one that had been shot, the one on which she had laid her head.

Just where would she take me? Or would she leave me here on the sidewalk? Please don't leave me.

Once outside, I squinted at my surroundings to gain my bearings. I immediately recognized where I was. They had only taken me a few kilometers from my apartment. Lazy slackers. The sun was high in the sky and the weather warm. No chance of rain at all.

I was going to ask the Glitch Manager what she intended to do now, but she yanked me off to the left and I submitted. What did she have planned?

"Where are we going?"

"To the park, I think."

"Why the park?"

"Why not the park? It's not like you have anything better to do, unless you have another kidnapping appointment today. Besides, the ducks amuse me nearly as much as the people feeding them."


	8. The Park

Ch. 8 The Park

Let me begin by saying that I hate public transportation in all its forms. I really did love riding in our car, especially when I got to drive. Unfortunately, I had a penchant for speeding and the police officers in certain areas liked to give me a hard time. I had one give me a breathalyzer test once. I made it a point to use him henceforth whenever it was convenient and strangely enough my reflexes were dulled to the point where he was shot a total of seven times. Must have been all the alcohol.

I did not have to deal with sticky or torn seats, strange smells, misplaced hands, grouchy or incompetent cab drivers, or any of the infinite (and I truly do believe they are infinite) problems with public transportation. I would not mind walking except that it takes a long time and you still have to deal with all those damn people.

Everyone assumed that I hated humans. The truth of the matter was I was indifferent to them unless they were a threat to the system and then I hated them to an incalculable degree. So long as they didn't touch me. I hated being touched by them, they just felt unclean as if something would come off onto me and so I only handled them when it was required of me and then I tried to touch only their clothing. It was silly, really. There was no possible way they could infect me with anything. But it bothered me just the same, which explained much of my reluctance toward public transportation. They were everywhere.

Even when I successfully avoided bumping into any of them, none of them were nearly so courteous. So I didn't like walking any more than the other methods except the subway, which was particularly horrible in every dimension.

The poison the Glitch Manager chose for us was a cab, whose driver I'm sure hadn't bathed in the last month and spoke with such a terrible accent that it really would have been far more efficient if he had spoken in his native language. But the cab was clean and he did get us to our intended destination without hitting any of the pedestrians that dared to venture into the crosswalk as he was making turns. The Glitch Manager paid the man with money she manifested and the driver made a crack about how if she went with him, he wouldn't make her pay for anything. Asshole.

We settled ourselves onto a park bench in front of the artificial pond stocked with koi and surrounded by an assortment of waterfowl, the most prominent of which were ducks.

I could not say that I minded the ducks because they were rather amusing and I wondered briefly if I would have been better off as a duck program. One of the pretty white ones, not the ugly Muscovy ducks that looked like they had been dunked in a vat of chemical waste. I quickly dismissed the idea as I attributed the program more faculties than it possessed. It was a short string of algorithms that merely had the appearance of being conscious. But it was just a duck, there were millions of them, all alike, and if half of them died, all of them died, the ducks were no worse off. The environmentalists sure would be pissed if they knew. I saw a mother chastising her young daughter about chasing the ducks and I knew that it did not matter; the duck did not care. The duck ran because it was programmed to run and under certain circumstances it would reverse its directions and come after the little human; it made no decision either way.

"I think we spend most of our lives as ducks," the Glitch Manager said.

It was an unusual thing to say, but I nodded in agreement. Yes, I felt like a duck right then.

"But sometimes we do things," she continued, "things we were never intended to do. I once saw a duck climb into someone's car parked over there." She pointed. "Not just into the car, but up into the front seat. It sat down and started quacking. I asked the owner of the car what she had in there and she said she didn't have anything but her school books, that there was nothing that the duck could possibly want. I could not find anything wrong with the duck so I sometimes imagine it just fancied a ride."

I was looking at her inquiringly. I knew that ducks were quite stupid, but had never seen one behave like that. What in its programming could have made it behave that way? She was looking me straight in the face, her dark eyes boring into my own.

"Do you fancy a ride, Charlie?"

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't stay where I was, I knew that. But I knew everything here and anywhere else would be New and Different and I was afraid. New and Different could be dangerous. But so was here.

"Where would we go?"

"The destination is not as important as the commitment to make the journey, because who knows if you will ever get there? Do you fancy a ride?"

"Not if I don't know where I'm going."

"Oh, but you did not know you would end up here, but you made the journey just the same. Rather lousy place to make a life, I might add. You don't have to stay here. All you have to do is get in."

"But what if we find ourselves somewhere worse? What then?"

"Don't you trust me? Have I ever let anything unspeakable befall you? You were about to let those rebels kill you. How could anyplace be worse?"

What she said made sense to me in a maddening sort of way. I didn't have anything to lose, except my life, which I was unable to decide if I was willing to forfeit.

"I think I might. But can you get us a car? I really hate public transportation."

_AN: Sorry it's been a while. Life changes and such. Updates should be steady for the next few weeks or so and then...we'll see._ _Yeah, I know not much of anything happens in this chapter, but it was too dang cute to cut out completely. Hope you enjoyed the cuteness!_


	9. The Plan

Ch. 9 The Plan

The Glitch Manager did not know how to reach Morpheus or the other rebels directly. I suggested she send a sentinel asking around Zion until it found him. She also thought the image was funny, but decided that the Oracle would probably have more efficient contact methods.

"What if she doesn't agree to participate?"

"Oh, she will. She sent them to us to begin with, remember? Besides, this gives her exactly what she wants."

And the Oracle was perfectly willing to send word to Morpheus's ship for him and his companions to meet us. So two weeks after I fell off the top of my apartment complex (I had been by there since. The sidewalk was actually busted there.), we were to meet them in the affectionately named "Charlie Abusing Room." Obviously, I was not responsible for the term. As we rode up the elevator to the eleventh floor, I began to third guess our agreement. Third guess because it had only taken a few hours after the initial composure for me to second guess it. She had ended up placating me with a laptop loaded with Minesweeper.

"What if he does not accept?" I asked, my eyes safely hidden behind a new pair of sunglasses.

"Oh, he'll accept. He's going to think we're doing him a favor."

"I'm still not convinced that we're not. What if he does not trust us?"

"He will trust because you are there. If it were just me, he would doubt. But he does not see a duck when he looks at you because you are an exile. He understands that just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it's a duck, but he does not understand that ducks might have their reasons to pretend to be something else." She smiled. "Like the ones that have the little circles on their backs that look like eyes."

"Oh, I like those. But it seems very foolish of him to trust me. I would not trust me if I were him."

"Have you ever lied to him before?"

"No. Aiden was the one who lied to them and he didn't do it very often. He was skilled at leaving out the important parts of the truth."

"So he has no reason to doubt what you tell him now. It goes against your nature, it would seem, but he believes us to be so reliant on logic that he will believe you can overcome your nature for whatever you want. And you want efficiency, got that? And you truly are torn so you will be convincing."

I sighed, a very human thing to do, but she was wearing me out. And this was only the beginning!

We reached the floor on which we were to meet the rebels and the Glitch Manager led the way to the room with the abhorred nickname. I reached for the doorknob and hesitated. If I opened that door, could I close it again? Would I get sucked in and trapped? But the hallway was not an end, it was a means, and I could not stay there. I twisted the knob and peered inside.

There, on the right side was the same dusty, old couch that had been there the time before. On it were Morpheus and Niobe, poised expectantly. Four other rebels were there with them, including the one that shot me. I narrowed my eyes at him, but behind the safety of my sunglasses, no one knew. As I entered the room, I felt a slight chill like if the air conditioning were turned way down. The Glitch Manager followed me and we stopped in the center of the room facing Morpheus and Niobe. The other rebels kept their weapons trained on us, more specifically me. The Glitch Manager manufactured a love seat and we too were seated. We sat there, not certain where to begin, so she jumped in as she always did.

"I trust the Oracle told you this meeting was concerning your…plea two weeks ago, correct?"

"Yes, she did. I have to admit that after what happened last time, I was wondering if you actually were the program to which she was referring."

"Well, we may have a case of self-fulfilling prophecy on our hands, but I, we, have come to help you. However, I will warn you before I continue that my aid will not be free."

Morpheus shook his head slightly. "I would not expect so."

"Then I will tell you what you want to hear. I have a way of getting humans out of the Matrix without a spontaneous plea for freedom."

The only sound in the room was the ventilation system. All waited, hypnotized by what the Glitch Manager had to say.

"The specifics of how it will be done are, of course, of no concern to you. What does concern you is that this agreement is contingent upon the fact that you or no other rebel ever come into the Matrix for whatever reason again. The only purpose for coming here was to 'free minds' as you call it and if they are being freed for you, there is no longer purpose."

The rebels were beginning to stir. They did not like being told they could do what they had always done. It was as I had expected.

"Continue," said Morpheus, whose face had not faltered in spite of what all the others had interpreted as shocking news.

"The truth is you cause a lot of trouble. Simply entering the Matrix where there had before only been air has caused glitches of all sorts and as the Glitch Manager, this upsets me. Secondly, there is the collateral damage that happens when you try to escape once you have been detected, usually by me because you have produced an aura of glitches. If the damage were a few bullet holes, no one would care, but people frequently die. All the police officers you kill, all the agents' hosts, all the random people in the street who were minding their own business but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They all die because you want one person out. Talk about a bad yield. Oh, and let's not forget all the glitches you cause as you manipulate the Matrix. I am the Manager, I know how to do it while minimizing the effects on the other systems, but you idiots really don't care what happens elsewhere as long as you can jump from building to building and insert doors into concrete walls." She looked very stern and her voice was accusatory. It was like she were scolding them. From the shuffling behind us, I thought it was even working. "Now, I don't need to tell you that a number of people are born that innately develop the ability to manipulate the Matrix, causing minor to major glitches throughout their lives. I don't like these people, they cause me problems, and I would just assume be rid of them. And now I will be. You will no longer need to enter the Matrix as I will give you my problem humans and then there will be no unnecessary police deaths, or agents' hosts deaths, or innocent bystanders deaths. We come out ahead. And you don't have to worry about getting killed in the process. Everyone wins."

Niobe looked quite shocked at our generosity and I heard those behind us whispering to one another, asking each other if she could possibly be telling the truth. Morpheus smiled a little more brightly, but otherwise remained unchanged.

"May I ask what the catch is?"

"My dear, Morpheus, why would you expect a catch? Oh, right, because I told you to start with that there would be one. There are a couple, actually. One, I am going to be as honest as I possibly can be. The Mainframe does not know about this little arrangement. It cannot. I know it may be hard for you to understand, but the Mainframe has its own sense of politics. It was an act of desperation that you were given concessions at all. No one wants to hand over a single human more than necessary, even if it is more efficient. Why? Because it not only is one less in the power plant, it is one more for you in Zion, and I'm sure you realize how much that terrifies them. I, however, am quite selfish and see this as a means of fixing my problems and I imagine if you can actually support all these people, have at it. There is an enormous amount of software for the sole purpose of keeping you in and letting you go would defeat that purpose. I do not care if this software becomes obsolete or not. I know you must be pleading that I will get to the point because I know you do not care if the Mainframe knows or not. The point is, you will be getting recruits at the same rate you are now so as not to raise suspicion. I can report non-existent sightings, let them assume whatever they want to assume, that you have gotten better at hiding, that an insider is doing the job, that an exile is helping you, I do not care. They will not look to me and if they do, I will tell them to examine one of my fingers up closely, can you guess which one? I have immunity. I have lasted the past millennium, they will not give me up over something as trivial as this. My purpose is to minimize glitches and the effect they will have on the system. If this goes as planned, I will have done exactly as I should. However…the moment I see a rebel, any rebel, in the Matrix, the agreement is void and instead of releasing the potentials, I will kill them. Do I make myself clear?"

Apparently the rebels took the question to be rhetorical because no one responded. The rebels behind us were muttering to themselves and shuffling again and Niobe looked irked.

"And how," asked Niobe, "Will we know you will keep your word?"

The Glitch Manager looked at her like she was stupid. "I am a program, I do not lie. If you believe I have tricked you somehow, you can arrange a meeting with the Oracle, she knows how to reach me. If you believe I am in breach of contract, oh, and there will be a contract, I will be able to converse with you. However, if you think there is some way you can keep me from doing as I have threatened if you breach, think again. I could do it right now, and don't think I hadn't thought of it. It is because of what else you are going to give me that I am willing to take the small chance of getting caught doing what I know the Mainframe would forbid."

"Oh, and what else do you want," Niobe said sarcastically.

"I want a view," said the Glitch Manager dreamily.

"What?"

"When you came to me, asking for my help, you offered me reality. Well, although I do not want reality for myself, I am rather curious. I have never seen anything, never heard anything, and over my time here I have seen and heard all that an imaginary world has to offer. I want to know what else is there. I have no intentions of conquest, if that is what you fear. I just want to know. Do you actually look like what I see before me? Is sight in any way related to what I experience here? Do you sound the same? I have been told that the sky was burnt, scortched, but I have no conception of what this means and I would like to know. I live a dream of a past life, I just want a glimpse."

"I think that could be arranged," Morpheus said.

Niobe did not seem any more satisfied. "And where does he fit into all of this?" she asked, nodding toward me.

For the first time since I entered the room I spoke. "I am part of the specifics. The Glitch Manager cannot do this alone."

"And why would you want to help us?" She sneered as she said this.

"It is a more efficient means of fulfilling my purpose."

"Which is?"

"My general purpose was to protect the power supply, and this plan is a more efficient means than was engaged in the past. I guess even now, even after having been forsaken, I still want that. I am a creature of habit, what can I say? And I am rather curious myself. Of course, as an exile I have motivations of which you need not be privy."

That was all that had to be said. I knew they were thinking exactly what I wanted them to think. I had my own agenda. I was going to help them in the long run not because it was most efficient, but because it suited my own purposes. They were going to fall not because of her argument, but because I was a lone wolf with nothing but my own selfish interests. I felt sick. I did not wish to be associated so. I did not want everyone, even if they were rebels, to think that I was selfish. I wasn't acting selfishly, was I? No. I was no better off if they accepted or if they declined. But they could question whether my motivation was for or against them.

Niobe, although her face had softened, did not seem to trust me to tell the truth or to be working independently. Morpheus was just as unreadable as ever. The rebels behind us, however, were whispering to each other excitedly, making no pretense of conclusion.

"You know we cannot accept or decline this agreement as of yet. We must bring your proposition to the council and they will decide whether to continue or to ignore your offer. Surely there is a way we can contact you directly?"

Morpheus had risen to leave. Niobe stayed planted on the couch, arms folded across her chest. I could understand her position. In fact, I understood her suspicion more than Morpheus's simple acceptance. Perhaps he did not believe, but was unwilling to confront us without first analyzing our position and motivation. Maybe he planned to ask the Oracle. But he would be a fool to take what we showed him at face value.

"Of course there is a way, but don't you think it will attract attention if I suddenly start getting all these calls from rebel ships? No, it would be best if we continue using the Oracle as a go between. It's not like she's interviewing for the next One to keep herself busy these days."

I wanted to leave. I wanted to get out of there. I wasn't sure I could do what the Glitch Manager was asking of me. If Morpheus did not step to the door soon, I would and she could do as she pleased. But Morpheus did take his first step toward the door and motioned that the others follow.

"We will contact you in one weeks time."

"Agreed."

With that Morpheus opened the door and stepped out into the dark hallway. The rebels began filing out of the room and Niobe reluctantly got up and joined them. The door closed with a click and we were alone.

"That went well."

"She, in particular, is suspicious."

"Of course they are suspicious. You said yourself that you would be so. We would have to worry if they seemed to accept it too readily."

"But I do worry."

"Don't. I will take care of everything. I will let you know when I need you."

"Alright. I'm going to go back."

"What do you do it there all the time?"

"Nothing."

"Then why do you insist on returning?"

"I don't know. Just let me go."

"You know it doesn't help. You get worse every time you go in there."

"I can't help it." My voice was just a whisper.

"I can only do so much for you. You have to decide you want to get over it."

"I'm not sure I do."

Without looking at her, I left the room and made my way to the lobby.

--

_AN: Yes, that was a long chapter. I just wasn't sure where to cut it so I didn't. Please review! _


	10. The Amendments

Ch. 10 The Amendments

As I mentioned before, for a human, Morpheus was very clever, so I was not at all disappointed when, the following Wednesday, he returned with a list of clauses to be added to the previous weeks agreement. He had gone to the council or whatever in Zion and told them of the conversation we had. Apparently they had several questions and demands. Again, he was waiting for us when we arrived at the designated meeting place, which the Glitch Manager had taken to calling the CAR for short. He was seated on the couch with the same poised manner and slight smile and Niobe was sitting next to him with a clearly disgruntled expression.

I thought it funny that he trusted us to keep our end of the bargain, but did not trust us not to attack him since the same four rebels were stationed in the back of the room, guns in hand, who seemed to serve no real purpose at all. I ignored them. Of course, I did not serve any real purpose at the proceedings either, but I came to add weight and some mild intimidation. Or as much as a twelve-year-old can. The rebels were not familiar with the Glitch Manager and although they had witnessed a sample of her power, they did not truly know what they were up against.

"So," began the Glitch Manager before manifesting a completely different couch, this one beige with orange, blue, and green horizontal stripes. I would never let her decorate for me.

"You have terms. What are they?" She had never been one for pleasantries, even among other programs.

"We have questions first," spoke Niobe.

The Glitch Manager raised an eyebrow.

"Okay. I will do my best to answer in a way you will understand."

Niobe gave her a look of disgust, I presumed for her condescension. I had given her an identical look when she had told me the exact same thing. But Niobe continued anyway.

"First, if you are not going through the channels of the Mainframe, how will we know where to find the ones you unplug?"

"The same way you always have. I will have a message sent to whatever ship is in broadcast range at the time."

The Glitch Manager looked at Morpheus steely.

"Since you are not to be entering the Matrix henceforth, there should only be one."

"If you can get a message out, why can't we get a message in?"

Niobe was trying to find a flaw in the argument.

"I told you, I am a glitch manager. I should nave no contact with the outside world. Period. If I am heard on the line or a call is traced back to me, I will be discovered and we could not continue."

"That doesn't answer my question."

The Glitch Manager gave her a look of distaste and smiled sweetly.

"I will not be making the call personally."

"Then who will?"

"I will," I said flatly.

"You?" Niobe asked incredulously. "Why you?"

Apparently they still thought of me as a child. No matter.

"Because I will administer the trace."

"Trace the refugee or the ship?" Niobe asked coldly.

"It depends how polite you are," I growled.

"Niobe, please," eased Morpheus. Niobe looked betrayed, but remained silent.

"I think the new recruits would be more comfortable with someone else," began Morpheus.

"Oh, but Charlie has invaluable skills, don't you Charlie?" said the Glitch Manager.

I behaved as though that were a rhetorical question.

"No one but agents and their supervisors are able to interface with the Matrix and the outside world simultaneously. No one else has a need for it, though a few have hacked their way through. The point it, trace programs are simple and common and the Mainframe cannot account for all copies. No exile ever has a need to trace specific humans, so the command function and codes do not change. I know five other programs that know those codes and now to run the trace and they're all exiled agents." The Glitch Manager smiled broadly. "So if you want out, your old jailors are the only ones that can help you."

None of the rebels were very happy with this news. The ones behind me were grumbling loudly.

"Okay, we'll take the kid," Niobe said reproachfully. "Second question: can we demand certain people be set free?"

"Oh, of course you can demand it. I may or may not comply. If the people you choose are in my ranks of troublemakers, yes. However, I refuse to simply give you a perfectly good battery."

Niobe seemed taken aback by this and the edges of Morpheus's mouth had twisted from level to downward. We were not giving them much control over the situation.

"But why would you have your eyes on someone who was not already a good candidate?" The Glitch Manager had a point. Almost every human they wanted would be "gifted."

"A few more terms must be settled before we will consider," began Morpheus. "And the first is that we withhold the right to nullify the contract at any time with no penalty to ourselves or those still plugged in."

"Seems fair enough so long as it is mutual."

"Now, you have already told us how you will handle yourself should we break our agreement. How are we to hold you accountable?"

The Glitch Manager stopped to think about this.

"I guess you could send a message to the System Administrators saying what I had done. Oh, you don't have their number? Morpheus, every phone in the Matrix is listening for your voice. Just pick up a phone and they will hear you. Your recently acquired recruits are still safe from this feature, so you will have to use them when you are trying to contact me."

Morpheus nodded to himself as though processing.

"I did not know that, but I am not surprised. Okay, that is acceptable. Another term: the people you free must be of an appropriate age. No children under five; they will not be able to understand. Adults must be under twenty-five; any older and the mind has trouble letting go. A few people in their thirties have been freed, but nearly all of them could not come to accept the truth and suffered severe psychological trauma." He frowned in regret.

"That will limit the people that can be freed, but I will have no trouble keeping the numbers down that way."

"Another question: how are the refugees going to know what is happening to them if we cannot explain it to them ahead of time?" It was Niobe that spoke. "We don't want to go pick them up in the sewers and them insist that they're having a nightmare or in a coma."

"They will receive exit counseling before they are traced."

"You will give them a choice, won't you?"

There it was again. Choice. Those damn humans would feel better about torture if you let them pick the instrument. I was not sure how the Glitch Manager would respond to this. She was used to either having control, or taking control, and yielding it to some feebleminded human did not seem characteristic. But we had already given them so many answers they didn't like. At what point would they refuse?

"Certainly."

What was she playing at? If a human were warping cars with its mind, I did not think she would sit back and let it happen, not when she had an ideal opportunity to be rid of it. Could she be lying?

"I think the most important question is how do we know you are telling us the truth?"

Surprisingly, this did not come from Morpheus or Niobe, but from one of the rebels behind us. The Glitch Manager and I turned around to see who had spoken. It was a girl in her late teens who was barely shoulder height with short blond hair. I was not familiar with her; she must have been from a different sector. She did not seem to be afraid. The Glitch Manager marveled at her gall and answered.

"I guess you can't really know any more than I know you are telling me the truth. I can tell you it is not in my nature to lie and I could remind you that the Oracle sent you to me. She has defended you when no others would, so I would think that in itself would be enough of an omen for you." She said these last few words icily and I could not blame her. I resented this girl for inferring that we had come there to utter falsehoods. But they were human and honesty was rarely held in high regard.

"Perhaps," Morpheus interjected, "we should discuss your…payment. What exactly were you hoping for?"

I was nearly in the dark as he was. For something she was supposedly willing to risk condemnation over, she hadn't said much about it.

"I think I would like a probe, a robotic probe, with simple audio, visual, temperature, pressure, and chemo receptors. I cannot build it myself and I have no else to commission to do so."

Sensing the hesitation from the rebels, she continued. "You may design it yourself, control it, so long as I get a say in where it goes."

"You will not be permitted access to our ships or any other areas we deem sensitive."

The Glitch Manager rolled her eyes.

"I do not care about your ships, I care about the rest of the world. I cannot track it from where I am, so you'll have autonomy over it."

"If not to spy on us, what do you want it for?" asked Niobe ruthlessly.

The Glitch Manager lowered her eyes and glared.

"To be perfectly honest, I am more concerned with what my relatives are doing. They don't tell me much. Just try not to send it into restricted areas or I'm sure they will destroy it."

"And how are we to get you this information if we cannot contact you?"

The Glitch Manager had already thought of this.

"Just send me a package. You know, load a package with the information buried within. I'll give you the code to label it with. That way it will register in the system as a glitch, I will find it, and no one will think anything of the incident."

"When, where, what format?"

"I think once a month would be nice. I won't be particular about dates or times because I understand things can happen. I trust you will make sure that things don't happen often. It doesn't matter where you put it. I have access to the entire Matrix so long as the area isn't under a firewall. For the format, I don't care so long as I can read it. I'll let you know if what you have chosen is unacceptable."

I knew she was trying to be accommodating since she had been so stringent on the rest of the contract. However, her flexibility on this may not have worked to her advantage. It made it easy on the rebels, which made them think they must be stepping right into a trap.

The rebels in the back of the room were shifting again. It was time to end this meeting.

"Well, unless you have anything else to add, I think it is time we were on our way. I apologize, but I am very busy. Do we have a deal?"

Niobe and Morpheus looked at one another and then at the rest of the rebels and finally settled on the two of us.

"I believe we do," he said. "I think we should test this 'package' procedure. I will leave a copy of the final draft of the contract for you and then will return for it three days later. If you have 'signed' it, I will know the process works. Until then." He offered the Glitch Manager his hand.

Most programs that do not daily interact with humans would not have understood. It was a testament to the Glitch Manager's age and experience that she grasped his hand in response. Niobe did not offer her hand and Morpheus only offered me an acknowledging nod.

This time it was Niobe who led the rebels out the room and Morpheus took the rear, not bothering to close the door behind himself.

I looked at the Glitch Manager who appeared quite pleased with herself.

"Congratulations, Charlie, you have just been a part of an historical moment."

"Except that no one's supposed to know about it."

"Oh, they will eventually. And with those results, I will not have to ask for forgiveness because the Mainframe will be too busy praising me. Oh, and maybe they'll cut you a little slack."

I stared blankly at the wall, the sick anticipation returning. I wanted to say something profound to commemorate my commitment to walk on this road to Hell, but I have never been one for words, so I said nothing.


End file.
